Ultramarine [‘oltremare’] is a deep blue pigment that was once obtained, via a complex process, from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli.
It was used by the ancient Egyptians, then in the painted temples of sixth- and seventh-century Afghanistan and, later, in Chinese and Indian art: Italian artists began to use it in the middle ages.
In the 1400s Cennino Cennini extolled its qualities: “Ultramarine blue is a noble colour, pure and perfect beyond all others; its qualities excel anything that can be said of it or done with it”.
The name derives from its place of origin, the Orient: the pigment arrived in Europe via the ports of Syria, Palestine and Egypt, lands which were “across the sea”.
Among the most precious of the colours used in Italian painting, ultramarine was only ever applied to frescoes “a secco” [as a final layer applied once the fresco plaster is dry], as was the case, for example, in Giotto’s paintings in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.
Since 1825 the name ultramarine has been used to describe a manmade pigment of the same colour.
From the late 1970s onwards the word also begins to appear in many of the titles that Giovanni Anselmo gives to his work: for Anselmo it alludes both to the blue that he uses and to the geographical and metaphorical idea of “across the sea”.
A work like Mentre oltremare verso mezzanotte appare [‘Whilst Across the Sea, Towards Midnight, It Appears’, or ‘Whilst Ultramarine Appears Towards Midnight’] (1979-2012) consists, for example, of a rectangle of ultramarine paint applied directly on to the surface of the wall.
As Anselmo himself remarked, “… the stimulus it offers is not only visual, but also mental; it points to a place beyond the walls of the gallery, a place towards which both the artworks and the viewer are moving.
It is, in any case, a place that exists, because anywhere you go there will always be somewhere further ‘across the sea’”
Physical and metaphorical, tangible and imaginary, the doubling of meanings inherent in the word “ultramarine” is the conceptual basis for this exhibition, which brings together artists of diverse generations and nationalities.
The natural landscape and the ways in which we perceive, represent and imagine it offers the starting point for reflections on the relationship between the individual and the environment, the possibilities and limits of perception and imagination, the dialectical relationship between direct experience and representation.
The profound transformation that the last few decades have wrought in our very idea of nature and the way in which we view it is the stuff against which we measure the boundaries and judge the character of our identity and the different approaches of the artists on show.
Another element common to these artists is their use of a ‘language’ that is decidedly minimalist.Whether they ‘use’ drawing, sculpture, installations or photography, they all reduce their vocabulary to an essential minimum, and do so thanks to the most direct of possible relationships with their materials, and gestures that are characterized by an extreme linguistic rigour and simplicity of forms.Most of the works on show (a combination of new work and older pieces) are impressions, samplings, shifts in and juxtapositions of materials, objects and images.
However, this succinct approach, which aims for a predominantly abstract and non-iconic language, is not in any way that of traditional minimalism.Beyond the surfaces and around the apparently silent and image-free materials and forms that make up the exhibition, there multiply questions, narrative possibilities and emotional and figurative suggestions.
There is always something else across the sea.